Democrat Crybabies Cry Foul Over 9/11 Movie

Post-9/11 Era Forum

ABC's upcoming miniseries "The Path to 9/11" is generating a firestorm among members of the Clinton administration.

Several Clinton administration officials angry over portrayal in ABC made-for-TV movie.

Madeleine Albright: Film is 'defamatory'.


Oh, I get it! So, when Bush is bashed to no end about everything under the sun—including 9/11—it's alright. But when the shoe is on the other foot, it's "DEFAMATORY!"

Riiiiight…

F'n hypocrites.

9/11 was under his watch, believe it or not. This movie is trying to drop it in Clinton's lap. I don't see this as a partisan issue. Seems like someone is helping Dubbs pass the buck... or at least try to.

And Bush is bashed because of the things he really actually says and does. I know you don't choose to see that, but hey, that's why you are you.

It's a movie anyway, one I'll miss. But if I ever need to see a Dubya lovefest I'll just zoom over to FOX News.

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I saw something about this and apparently what has upset Madeleine Albright is an accusation that she pre warned Pakistan of potential US airstrikes to get Bin Laden. Now she has always denied this and the 9/11 commison looked at this charge and found it was false and had no basis yet apparently it features in this film.

I think what these people are saying is that if you want to bash us the so be it but bash us for something that actually happend.

I think it's a little pathetic that the filmmakers would release this biased historical perspective as a obvious political tool. But, what else can you expect. Another life raft being tossed from a sinking ship.

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Would you consider Michael Moore's film to be a "biased historical perspective?"

In some ways I would. Farenheit 9/11 covers more ground, however.

And I don't really see how one can compare the two. Not to mention the fact I've never seen this new revisionist 9/11 film.

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Well I have never seen any of Moores films because I prefer to get a balanced view of an arguement. However you bring up a good point. if things like Farenheit 9/11 are wrong because they have things in it that are not 100% factual is it also wrong that ABC's program also contains things that may not be 100% true?

It all comes down to how much your side looks better and how bad the other side looks. It's all pandering.

The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. And when you look at the events of 9/11 and the Bush administration as a whole, the truth is pretty obvious.

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I don't think my statement was slanted through democrat "blinders" at all.

Even if word of terrorists using airplanes to attack America hit Clinton's desk you would think Dubya would have had a clue pre-9/11.

I agree with you on some points above, including Jr. trying to finish his dad's war. The fact that 9/11 was used as his Iraqi springboard sickens me. The more and more the administration preys upon the fear of that day to further their agenda is deplorable.

Playing Monday Morning Quarterback and just saying, "well, in the end, Saddam is gone," is a farce. The ends do not justify the means. You want a pretty messed up regime, take a peek at Dubya's buddies in Saudi Arabia, where nearly all the 9/11 hijackers were from.

The far right can yank on the truth, spin it and paint it all different shades of gray all they want, but the truth shall set them free... from Congress, the Senate and hopefully the White House.

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From TVGuide.com:

ABC Edits 9/11, But May Yank Mini Instead

In response to complaints — including several by U.S. government types past and present — that The Path to 9/11, a two-part miniseries premiering Sunday, has gone "off script" by taking liberties with what was factually documented in its primary source material, the nonpartisan 9/11 Commission Report, ABC is said to be making some last-minute changes, including but not limited to excising a fictionalized scene in which national security adviser Sandy Berger nixes an easy kill on Osama bin Laden. "ABC is telling me that the final version I'll be pleased with," former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission and a paid consultant on the mini, tells the New York Daily News. Even so, sources close to the production tell Variety that this Path may ultimately be one not taken by ABC, which might opt to yank the mini from its schedule altogether. Officially, ABC has stood by its original statement on the matter, calling any criticisms of content "premature and irresponsible."
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Man, I hate Clinton so much, I don't know how express the contempt I have for the guy, I think if I loathed him anymore, he would be Al Gore.

BUT, the movie sucks. If you make a movie on facts, it should have facts in it, not fantasy segments like the film admits to. Aint fair to Clinton or the rest of his administration to make some movie full of truth and lies, then blend it all together in some hodgepodge bogus movie of the week. I know if they did it to Bush, I would cry foul.

Aint fair to Clinton, aint fair to anyone. I'm fake boycotting this movie.

Bush wants speech to interrupt 9/11 film

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

NEW YORK - ABC, still trying to deal with angry former Clinton administration officials about their Sept. 11 miniseries, was also faced Friday with a request from President Bush to interrupt the film for a speech.

The president has asked broadcast networks to clear time for an address to the nation Monday at 9:01 p.m., or at the start of the last hour of "The Path to 9/11" on the East Coast.

The network did not immediately say what it will do. It has said the film, which stretches to five hours running commercial-free Sunday and Monday, is still being edited amid concerns by Clinton officials that it drastically distorts history.

"No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible," the network said in a statement Thursday.

Former administration officials and Senate Democrats said the movie was "terribly wrong." Former President Clinton, speaking with reporters after a Democratic fundraiser in Arkansas on Thursday, said he hadn't seen the film but that "I think they ought to tell the truth."

ABC said that for dramatic and narrative purposes "the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue and time compression."

A group of historians, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Princeton University's Sean Wilentz, wrote to ABC parent Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger on Friday, urging him to scrap the series. They said that permitting inaccuracies to heighten drama is "disingenuous and dangerous."

"A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it," they wrote.

Harvey Keitel, one of the actors in "The Path to 9/11," also said he had questions about whether some of the material was accurate.

"When I received the script, it said ABC history project," Keitel said in an interview with CNN Headline News' "Showbiz Tonight." "I took it to be exactly what they presented to me, history. And that the facts were correct. It turned out not all the facts were correct, and ABC set out trying to heal that problem. In some instances it was too late because we had begun."

Scenes being reviewed by the network and producers involve Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and efforts to capture Osama bin Laden, according to an official close to the film who spoke on condition of anonymity, who stressed the editing was ongoing.

A cut of the film distributed to TV critics depicts a team poised in darkness outside bin Laden's cave fortress in Afghanistan, while an actor portraying Berger in Washington stalls on giving the final go-ahead to carry out the seizure. He confers via video phone to CIA chief George Tenet.

"Look, George," Berger says, "if you feel confident, you can present your recommendation to the president yourself."

Tenet responds angrily, then Berger's screen goes blank. He has hung up.

Having waited on the phone for clearance, the mission's lead CIA agent must give the rest of the team the bad news: the mission is aborted.

The next scene shows archival footage of Clinton's video testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Another scene in the movie depicts counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke explaining to FBI agent John O'Neill that he doesn't believe Clinton will take chances to kill bin Laden at a time Republicans were pressing for impeachment.

"It's pathetic," O'Neill said.

If Monday's portion of the film is interrupted by Bush's speech, the break will come as O'Neill is shown leaving the FBI, his warnings about bin Laden largely ignored and his career stalled by politics, to take his job as security head at the World Trade Center. He died weeks later in the attack.

Democratic senators protesting the movie suggested it "could be construed as right-wing political propaganda. Albright objected to a scene that reportedly shows her warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, which she said was false and defamatory.

The film quotes the actor playing Tenet responding to the notification by saying: "The end result being that we've enhanced bin Laden's stature in the Islamic world. He's thumbing his nose at us."

Director David Cunningham, in an earlier interview with The Associated Press, said people putting the film together would hear conflicting reports all the time. "These might be from experts who were there in the same room, and they're telling us completely opposite things." He said he would use the 9/11 commission report to try to resolve those disputes.

"There was no agenda for this movie to go after a particular party or person," Cunningham said. "We were showing what happened, and the people who were involved along the way. This is not a blue-state/red-state movie."

Thomas Kean, the former Republican New Jersey governor who led the commission, defended the miniseries.

"It's something the American people should see," he said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday. "Because you understand how these people wanted to do us harm, developed this plot, and how the machinations of the American government under two administrations not only failed to stop them, but even failed to slow them down."

Kean said he hoped people would watch the miniseries to "understand better what went on, and hopefully understand what still needs to be done."

The film had a budget of $40 million. Besides Keitel, it stars Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg.

The controversy is reminiscent of the one that erupted over a 2003 CBS miniseries about President Ronald Reagan. In the face of political pressure over that film's accuracy, CBS canceled it, and it later aired on the Showtime cable network.
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http://media.salemwebnetwork.com/TownHall/Car/b/PN091106.jpg

I would not jump to too many conclusions about what it is about this movie that is fact or fantasy, true or false, fair or unfair, etc. based on what people are saying about it. And who says broadcast companies have to be fair? It may very well be unfair to the Clinton Administration -or- it may be a truth that puts the Clinton Administration in a bad light.

But I think a more significant element of the controversy is that we have the government today threatening the broadcast license of ABC rather than risk the public deciding for themselves about the role of the Clinton Administration. The term, "censorship" gets thrown around quite loosely such as when the Dixie Chicks use the term to describe boycotts against them, but when a government does it, it is censorship.

Also noteworthy is the fact that this movie has been released to a sizable number of people, apparently as a kind of pre-screening. So whatever ABC does to it in the way of editing will be public knowledge. The original will be all over the Internet. So we will have the before and the after. We will know what changed, and we will know that it was the Democrats that demanded that change. So ABC has put themselves into a very weird box here. Perhaps the weirdest thing of all is that ABC would have produced something that painted the Clinton Administration in a bad light even if it were true. I suppose Bush could have made them do it.

"'The Path to 9/11' is something the American people need to see."
—Thomas Kean, Chairman of 9/11 Commission

If what the docu-drama says is false and defamatory then whoevers been implicated should just take them to court for lible. That's what happens in the UK. Is US law different?

If the truth isn't worth telling then why tell the story at all.

I wonder how Joe feels that that the leftist bush hating BBC is showing the docusoap over here as well part 2 is tonight.

67 Britons were killed in the 9/11 attacks. The docu-drama does not particularly showcase George Bush in a good light, although it thus far focuses some criticism on officials of the Clinton administration, which the BBC to a large degree also loved to hate since it too was an American institution. Thus the BBC may proceed.

Well actually Clinton was very popular with the Brits because of whjat he did in Ireland. The Beeb always seemed to like Clinton as well he always got favourable reports when he was was not in power.

I just heard that the total amount of the movie that was removed in the last minute editing was one minute out of the five hour total run time. So one minute was removed and 299 minutes stayed intact.

I think it has been pretty fair so far because it shows that the terrorists existed prior to the Bush presidency, as opposed to the terrorists having been created by Bush.

No worries, this fictional piece of poop was smashed in the ratings by the NFL. Ah yes, the winds of change.

Have fun polishing the Titanic, Curley.

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The left shoe drops.

Sour grapes? I know, it's gotta sting.

http://www.inreview.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=670331

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I was fake boycotting it, but I caught the first 10 minutes of it, didn't look like anything I wanted to see.

I switched over to CBS and they had that documentary the guy was filming at the firehouse on 911. Absolutely brutal. Seen it before, swore I wouldn't watch it again. Those firemen in the lobby of the trade center, with the loud bangs that sound like explosions, it was the bodies of jumpers hitting the ground and the overhang by the lobby.

Made me sick. I watched it anyway for over an hour, then couldn't take no more.

Was at a buddies house playing poker with the peeps and eyeing the Colts vs. Giants game. Can't say that I missed the 9/11 serial.

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I don't think this ABC movie will need to beat everything else in ratings in order to help Bush. This is pretty amazing. A bunch of Republicans must have hijacked ABC.

This movie shows incompetence by both administrations which is fair enough. But what it really does is show how deep the context of the Islamic terror problem really is. It reveals that that context has been all scrunched up by the news media and the Democrats over the last few years in order to concentrate the blame on Bush. This movie will go a long ways toward undoing all that damage. And now Bush comes on in the middle of the movie and gives a speech that fits right into the context of it. Go ABC! They might keep the Democrats from getting their hands on congress in November.

"It reveals that that context has been all scrunched up by the news media and the Democrats over the last few years in order to concentrate the blame on Bush."

Now that's comedy. Yup, that dang liberal media making Bush look bad! Dangit! Not like he's done that himself. Must be some democrat hocus pocus!

Right wing neocon's don't need an elephant as a mascot, they need an Ostrich.

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Well whoever it was that scrunched up Bush, the media or the Republicans; the movie certainly un-scrunched him. It was like a five-hour Bush infomercial. And right in the middle, you even had a 20 minute live appearance by Bush himself.

Glad I missed it and I sure don't miss it. I just can't believe it wasn't on FOX.

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I'm sure the Curley household saw it, but there are plenty of "us" who didn't. Even beside the fact the man screws the english language more than he's screwed the things in Iraq. But maybe that's just his "strategery". Oh Curley, you're a gem.

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